From Grits to Chopsticks

When ordering food in China, you have two basic options: something that is fried in oil of questionable origin, or something that is boiled in a soup base.  Sometimes, the soup boils at your table in a hotpot:

Although the temperature can be really high, the spices make it even hotter:

Sometimes the meat is hard to eat, like this spicy broth with pig’s feet:

In the west, we occasionally talk about food that is loaded with carbs.  This spicy fish soup is loaded with carp (and small bones):

This is the land of chopsticks for a good reason: you certainly don’t want to take a big spoonful of this stuff!

Here is the soup menu from another restaurant we visited.  I suspect that they must’ve recently made a special purchase of a large pile of discounted kelp:

We were truly blessed to take a break and travel to the States and be with our family members.  While spending time together at Myrtle Beach, we had our annual sand sculpture competition.  Jeruid created a sand shark:

I did a rendition of the Titanic:

And Caitlyn turned Timothy into an octopus:

Earlier in our visit, we were also able to go hiking with Stephen and Jessica:

Of course, we’re quickly learning that one of the best parts of vacation is spending time with grandchildren:

Today, we will head back to China.  We’ll sure miss our gang – Love y’all so much!

Now that final exams are over and grades have been submitted, it’s time to begin the English Summer Camps.  We have a wonderful group of students and teachers from America who are working with three different groups, starting with university students (about 80 this year):

In the opening ceremony speech, I pretended to be a doctor and did some “surgery” to expose barriers to learning:

I was able to recycle the theme for the other opening ceremonies, using a cartoonish character for the children’s camp (about 180 kids):

The team is also working with rural English teachers (150 this year), giving them new ideas to use with their primary and middle school students.  Since each of these teachers will instruct about 200 students, this effort has huge leverage:

All of the students and teachers get an official camp shirt.  Here we are wearing this year’s attire for university students:

In addition to morning English classes, the college students participate in afternoon activities.  Last week, they enjoyed a mock American wedding and reception:

Here are some friends of the bride:

There was some fluffy icing left from the cake, so two of the American students gave a “pie-in-the-face” demonstration:

We are very grateful for the willingness of these American students to come to China and be a blessing to our school!

Two of our good friends took us out to dinner on Friday night, treating us at a local “snack restaurant.”  They quickly placed a huge assortment of interesting things to eat on the table:

This was a busy place (click here to see:Snack Dinner).  Along with a large plate of pigs feet, we had some really spicy chicken feet:

I’m not sure what I liked best about the following photo — Susan eating a chicken foot or the kid in the background who’s excitedly trying to catch the fly on the wall:

We also had some things that looked like Chinese enchiladas (which our hosts couldn’t really describe in English).  On the plate to the left is “stinky tofu,” something that is usually cooked along the street and smells too bad to be edible:

In the spirit of “eating whatever is set before you,” we both had a piece.  Our youngest son has an interesting way of defining the food at the bottom of his favorites list: “it doesn’t make you vomit.”  I can honestly say that stinky tofu is better than this!  We also had some spicy snails:

You extract the creature using a toothpick, and pinch off the white, slimy part before eating it:

It’s always interesting to experience new things in China.  And fortunately, in spite of the predictions of our friends (who are both medical students), we didn’t end up with diarrhea that night!

A Chinese friend of ours recently joked about the way that Brits sometimes mispronounce the name of this country as “Chinar.”  He remarked that their accent actually contains a hidden truth.  By combining the two Chinese words “Chāi” (拆 – to destroy) and “Nǎ’er” (哪儿 – where?), it describes the reality of the rapid pace of modernization, leaving us wondering about what will be torn down next.

One of our past posts (“There Goes the Neighborhood”) lamented the fact that our nearby market was slated for destruction.  Just in case you were wondering about how the Chinese destroy a block of buildings, here is a series of photos to satisfy your curiosity.

Step 1: Add a few stories onto the old apartment buildings.  While this seems strange before demolition, many landlords will quickly expand if they believe the neighborhood will soon be destroyed, expecting greater compensation for a larger building:

Step 2.  Remove the windows, doors, and water tanks/heaters for re-use:

Step 3.  Start knocking down the buildings.  Quite a large crowd was watching when this one fell down:

As the dust cleared, we saw these boys who may have been standing closer than the OSHA limit:

The buildings are taken down one-by-one using large jackhammers (click jackhammering to watch video):

You can see our apartment complex in the background of the photo above (yellow and white buildings).

Destruction and normal life attempt to coexist during the process.  The vegetable sellers from our market will probably stay here until the last buildings fall down (see the rubble in the background):

Step 4.  Harvest the rebar.  Since most apartments in China are made of concrete and brick, there is a lot of valuable rebar to recover.  The first crew uses cutting torches and tools to get the big stuff:

The next crew spends most of the day swinging sledgehammers and picking through the chunks of rock:

The rebar is sorted, piled up, and loaded onto a truck for re-use:

Step 5. Scoop up the rubble and haul it away:

Step 6. Sweep up the dust and spread it around:

This final step often shows up on our porch:

Perhaps next year, we’ll be able to look through this door of destruction to a new, living community:

Our university just finished the regular teaching period and is now entering two weeks of final exams:

This is also the time of year for graduation.  As I mentioned in a past post, the graduation ceremony here is given far less attention than in America.  This is evident by the few rows of spectator seats at the event (in front of the graduates):

It is also evident by the fact that I took the above photo from the classroom window during my regularly scheduled Marketing class.  The graduation ended about the same time as my class, so I hurried down to visit with a few of my prior students:

Although several hundred graduated with degrees in International Business, I’m sorry to say that only a handful will actually find a decent job in their field:

In order to motivate participation in my classroom, I reward my students for answering/asking questions by giving them a piece of “small money”:

According to the rules of the US Treasury Department, printing such money is legal if the size is less than 75% of the original (my bills are about 25%).  Of course, I’ve altered a bit of text and substituted my grandson’s picture.  When the students receive some money, they write their student ID on the back and return it to me at the end of class.

In addition to using the money to measure classroom participation, we hold an auction at the end of the year (click here SoldForTwenty for a small video).  This is always a lot of fun as students form joint-ventures and try to out-bid one another for the top items.  Snack foods are always in high demand, especially those that can be shared in a group, like this tub of “Snickers” bars which sold for 65 dollars:

Depending on the mood of the group at the moment, some obscure items can go for a high price as well, like these chicken feet (18 dollars):

We also sold a slightly used tee-shirt (too small for Susan) from our oldest son’s Alma Mater for 50 dollars:

Even though the ratio of sales/purchase price ends up low, we always get a few expensive items to keep the interest level high (like this badminton set):

It is also interesting to see how the energy can drive up bids.  This year, the toothpaste sold for 35 dollars, while it only went for 12 dollars two years ago:

For those geeky types who have actually read all the way to this point, here is a data analysis of bid price to purchase price using four semesters of auction data:

And if you are the ultimate geek, you can download my data set for your own personal analysis: Auction Items

As he was finishing up his visit with us, we continued to keep Timothy busy.  He met a lot of students at English corners (and joined with some of them separately for meals afterwards):

Here he is, teaching them to play “Ticket to Ride”:

Remember the card game “Spoons”?  We learned that some students had played a similar game – only it’s called “Chopsticks”!

We also took Timothy to one more nearby tourist site — JiuXiang Scenic Area.  It was actually our first time there (and is worthy of future visits!).  The entrance to the cave network is massive:

A large volume of water has been working a long time to carve out these deep caverns:

These enormous formations reminded us of the rice terraces on many of the local mountains:

Of course, this is China, and there are things that you probably wouldn’t see in a “show cave” in the west.  For instance, this cave has a “5D Theatre” inside:

We were able to eat our lunch in a picnic area with nearby shops and a museum:

There is also a team of people who will carry you back up the steps on a sedan chair (for a fee):

And even though this is a “national level” tourist attraction, it is fun to see that the ticket booth is displaying “Merry Christmas” decorations in the middle of June:

Timothy’s time in China is drawing to a close, so we decided that it would be appropriate to do a “Chinese marathon” on Saturday night.  To dispel any confusion, this has nothing to do with running, but actually an attempt to eat as many different kinds of food for dinner as possible.  He started early with a large plate of noodles while sharing some of my duck-rice:

These Muslim noodles were a favorite of his when he used to live in Chengdu:

As we walked to our next restaurant, the streets of the school village were starting to fill with people:

On the north end of the village is a good place to eat jiaozi (Chinese dumplings):

On the way back, we stopped for some street food, partaking in a local specialty of ground rice and raisins:

We topped off the evening with some “shaokao” (barbeque) in the market next to our apartment.  There are so many choices of interesting things to eat:

We settled in on some “normal” things:

Of course, one of the highlights of a Chinese marathon often comes later that night (when running can become part of the process).  Fortunately, we had a good rest and even felt up to eating some “zongzi” the next day.  Zongzi, a special food eaten during the Dragon Boat festival (last week), is made from sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, usually containing some beans, nuts, or meat:

As a holiday gift, our school had kindly given us some salted duck eggs to eat along with the zongzi, but by this time, we’d had our fill…

Each year, many of my International Trade students volunteer to work at the SE Asia Trade Fair held here in Kunming.  I always like to go and visit them, asking questions about their business to see what they are learning.

There were hundreds of officers on-site this year for crowd control.  They aggressively enforced a relatively new rule in this culture — waiting in line:

Once inside, a huge display of roses greeted visitors (flowers are big business in Kunming):

The most notable thing about the Expo this year was the density of the crowd:

Before I came to China, I would get nervous standing in a crowded place.  Perhaps it helps when you are a head taller than most people, but I am thankful that crowds don’t seem to bother me any more.  When there was a little open space, visitors relished the opportunity to move a few steps on their own:

Unfortunately, the crowd was so massive that I wasn’t able to find any of my students in the multiple venues.  As I walked around, I saw the usual jewelry displays from Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia:

I was interested to find a bicycle built in Shanghai using metal, wood, and leather:

Speaking of wood, there were machine tools for mass production of potentially “hand carved” wooden items:

Locally built truck engines:

and solar panels (just in case you happen to be following the EU trade dispute):

There are also many cities seeking new business partners.  I’m really excited about going to Macao, which seems to be popular with mice:

Business was really brisk, and many customers were carrying big items out of the gates.  When the items got big enough, some folks had to use their heads:

Here’s a long photo to bring this lengthy, crowded blog to an end:

We recently booked some cheap flights for a weekend trip to southern Yunnan Province.  When we arrived at the airport, we found out why they were so cheap – our first plane was canceled:

While the above picture is an over-dramatization of our initial reaction, we were still a bit disappointed about the six hour delay.  However, we were soon blessed with an opportunity to eat lunch with a former student who is now working at the airport:

And we had time to take photos with the floral display of our hometown name:

And to do some light reading:

When we finally got underway, we were treated to some beautiful views of the Chinese countryside:We travelled to the town of Jinghong in Xishuangbanna, near the borders of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand.  Our friends own a hotel in a new section of town:At an off-season price of 88RMB ($14), it’s a great deal for a nice room.  From the 9th floor, we had a good view of the Mekong River:Most of the buildings on this side of the river are less than two years old, part of a huge tourist town under construction by the government.  That includes this giant temple – a required stop for all tour buses.  Sadly, the tour guide will teach guests how to bow before the idols.As the sun began to set, we drove to a local restaurant for dinner:After ordering our food, we selected a table with an interesting view:One of the local specialties is a noodle dish that bites back:Back at the hotel, we enjoyed the night view of the city across the river:

On Sunday afternoon, we rode over to Manting park, a tropical jungle place with a few hundred years of history:

While there, we watched the elephants play soccer and basketball:

and frisk a naïve volunteer:

We also sat on one for a photo:

Since we were taking photos with local color, we also dressed up in the Dai minority clothing:

Of course, a large group of Chinese tourists came by at this time, many of whom wanted to take pictures with us.

We also went to see the bird show, but arrived too late.  The birds were still hanging around, so Susan held a show of her own:

After a shower and brief rest, we headed over to the night market:

Some of our favorite shops are the ones that sell “name brand clothing,” like this familiar tee shirt logo:

Of course, we enjoyed the various types of food, including this “peace” of chicken foot:

Even if your time is limited,we’d recommend that you stop in at the Jinghong Nissi Garden Hotel the next time you’re in Southwest China.